Play video from local file using Adobe AIR

Question

I'd like to play videos, as well as display images and possibly other flash content using adobe air, and reading from the local file system. I've been searching APIs and I have not yet been able to connect the dots.

I know of flash.filesystem.File and flash.filesystem.FileStream and have experimented with loading and reading files. I believe I can load images this way but haven't tried.

As for video:

mx.controls.VideoDisplay - seems to accept a file:// URI for source, but I can't get it to work.

flash.media.Video - accepts a NetStream or can load video directly from a video input, can't seem to find a way to reference a local file

Can anyone help me out here? I specifically want to load and play video directly off the local disk, not from a web server or a streaming file server... assume no network connectivity.

Slightly related question: Loading a video from the local file system… (but my question does not involve a web browser)

Answer 1

Try adding "-use-network=false" to your Flex compiler settings. This will give you access to load local resources, which could be the source of the problem; the sandboxing rules are somewhat sensitive, so if you're sure you won't need network connectivity, tweaking this setting might relax things a bit.

Also ran across this, which might be related as well:

http://soenkerohde.com/2008/06/playing-local-files-with-air/

In my case, though, just briefly testing, both of the following work in debug and release builds, without modifying the compiler setting, in case it's just the literals you're using to reference the FLVs:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">
    <mx:VideoDisplay source="D:\Data\Projects\Flex 3\AirLocalVideo\bin-debug\NightSky.flv" />
</mx:WindowedApplication>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:WindowedApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">
    <mx:VideoDisplay source="file://D:/Data/Projects/Flex 3/AirLocalVideo/bin-debug/NightSky.flv" />
</mx:WindowedApplication>

... so I guess it's maybe difficult to diagnose without a bit more information. Hope this helps -- I'll keep an eye on the comments if you want to share a bit more info.

Answer 2

The use I have in mind is required to be programmatic in usage. I was looking for a way to do this directly with ActionScript.

I finally stumbled onto the solution I was hoping for... using a NetStream object, but (non-intuitively) you can use this to access local files as well:

private function playVideo():void {
  var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
  nc.connect(null);

  var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);

  # onMetaData listener is required otherwise you get a ReferenceError
  var client:Object = new Object();
  client.onMetaData = function(metadata:Object):void {
    trace(metadata.duration);
  }
  ns.client = client;

  var v:Video = new Video();
  v.attachNetStream(ns);
  stage.addChild(v);

  var f:File = new File("/tmp/test.flv");
  ns.play(f.url);
}